Brief Biography
Marina is a plant scientist with a strong interest in plant pathology. She mainly supports the work of the Technical Panel on Diagnostic Protocols (TPDP) and the Technical Panel on Commodity Standards (TPCS), particularly in developing diagnostic protocols and commodity standards respectively. Before joining the IPPC Secretariat, Marina was a research fellow at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), where she worked on a national project to mitigate the impact of Xylella fastidiosa on agricultural and natural ecosystems. She was part of a team that investigated Xylella vectors such as Philaenus spumarius and its feeding behavior using the Electrical Penetration Graph (EPG) technique. Before that, she was a trainee in the Plant Health Monitoring team at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), supporting the work of three pest surveillance projects to guide European Union Member States in planning, designing, and implementing plant pest surveys. Her professional journey started at Farmvent, an innovative vertical farming startup, where she was responsible for designing and conducting trials to evaluate the yield and growing conditions of fresh herbs in small-scale indoor farms. Marina has a bachelor’s degree in land and agroforestry science from the University of Bologna and a master’s degree in plant sciences, with a specialization in Natural Resource Management, from Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. Marina is Italian and speaks English and Italian.